Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Saxifrage Our ten-year-old feet running along the drystone wallbetween our houses, the saxifrageslumped so thick over the bubbling stone, we didn’tknow there was a gap betweenmy garden wall and hers. Did we everrecognise a certain lack of solidityas we hammocked across the gapbetween her and me? Rockbreakers […]
Poetry
2 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Toad Tide Waking from winter-deep half sleep to acheand seep and sap, you stir in the ooze,heave your tender bulk from mud to air,begin the heavy-limbed creep to the watersof your making, weeping soft poison to ward youon your way. Risking rat and road and raptor,you find […]
3 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries A Competition Buzzard over crow, buthooded crow over raven. Salmonthrashing on a hook and leaderover sugar in the evening. Winterbranches scribbled on the sundownlike witches’ fingers overthin silk leaves of bible paper.Corroded silver forks, I think—never sold, just given—overlate-night radio, coruscant streets.Silence over apology untilwe insisted on […]
2 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries bee me up talk to me about tender.are you blue from slender.are you bruised from under.or are you billowing bright.were you green this morning.or are you new to this leafing.hell bent. on sky filling.are you made of light.is this rain again.or a recent memory.and is this density.this […]
3 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Cloaca Maxima God bless the modern malefactors,for fellow travellers praise be God,bless boldness, bless servility. We used to sweeten cities, drainingbeneath the polity, expelling refuseto oblivious seas and barbarous lands. Death and dirt and inconveniencewere flushed to cleanse our rituals. Sometimeswe showed the process off, sanitised and […]
Windwatt
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Windwatt Tide wrack windsthrough clotted estuary mud,mud so thick it stops the breath,but gives life to riverine shell-creatures,and makes mudflats blossom with detritus, estuarine silt flowers;clay-born and half-formed things. Taf-torn, river wrought,the Landsker Line* splitsmore than language; even this island town, from which castlesslide into swamps, leveesdissolve […]
3 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries My first white chest hair My dentist told me I lack wisdomteeth while filling my root canal cavity.His slender three-eyed metal swan shonelight on my every misdeed. I had ignoredmy body, as if it was mine onlyon a monthly subscription. Free repairs,as long as I kept paying […]